False Colours
by tokyostory
Summary: Yukimura takes the future of the team into his own hands, trying to salvage something of its fiery past and the relationship he once knew. Kirihara's perspective. Sequel to 'Chimera'. YukimuraxSanada. [Yaoi].


False Colours

As Kirihara leaves the hospital, he delves his hands into his pockets and makes a grab for the paper-wrapped gum that Marui gave him earlier. There's an unspoken _thing _in the team at the moment whereby anyone visiting Yukimura gets a piece of candy; something colourful for afterward, something to chew on and forget about wiring and pain and disinfectant-scent. Nobody talks about it, of course, because their duty is to support the Captain not to make him an endurance – but it happens nonetheless and it brings them all some small comfort after their visits. Kirihara likes the gum, but he doesn't need it. He shoves it into his mouth and sucks thoughtfully, ambling slowly toward the train station near the hospital grounds. Yukimura is never ill when Kirihara is there; the nurses don't come around, and he sits by the window in his pyjamas as if he has just awoken from peaceful dreams. Sometimes he sneers at his dinner and they joke about normal things. Nobody talks about the operation or the future. When he asks about _his _team, Kirihara talks as if he were still there. Yukimura responds in kind with personal advice on practices he's not seen. Genichirou's serve needs work; too powerful and therefore limited. _Akaya, you must do something about your footwork. _The really frightening thing is that he's always right.

Sometimes, Kirihara muses, one foot in the train – sometimes, they talk about sex. It's something that he always feels comfortable within, perhaps because he's a virgin and all he knows of sex is that it's easy and fun and carries no strings. He knows that Yukimura loves Sanada. He understands that loving someone as cold as Sanada is can't end well. Once he told Seiichi that he should get his act together and find someone else to crush over, someone who actually has a heart, but Yukimura retorted tartly, "Someone like you, Akaya?" and Kirihara learned then not to delve too close into whatever his Captains are doing. Or not doing. Still, he thinks it's sad. All the girls he knows are so pleased to have him around and his hands in their hands and their hair – and he can't imagine what it's like to love someone who treats you like their mother. It's a bit stupid, really, he thinks, but then people in hospital do tend to grab onto the glory days. Kirihara is fed up of Rikkai excluding him from their discussions of second year and how passionate Yukimura and Sanada both were. He sits down and leans his head against the window, trying to spot the greenery in the mass of speeding-by-buildings. He is tired of pouting that he knows more than everyone thinks; that he was there, when they played that match, and something in it worked his breath loose and his cock hard.

He's asked Yukimura about that, too. Whether tennis has that effect on everybody. Seiichi thought so long about it that Akaya worried that he was choosing the most cutting way to throw him from the team, until he finally found his voice; soft and inquisitive, vaguely amused. "I can't imagine anyone else asking me such a question," he'd said. "Which, all in all, makes me glad that you're here and not they." He'd wound his hands together in his lap, watching the sky. "I've known it happen sometimes. When watching or partaking in particularly intense matches. Sexuality is wide and insatiable, Akaya. Sometimes it is spurred on by adrenaline or competition. Sometimes it's as simple as listening to heavy breathing, or watching two very strong people fight over a victory…" A small smile, deceptive and exclusive. "Nobody owns up to it, of course. We've all our pride. But it's normal and more common than you might think. If it makes you feel easier, I suggest you take up watching the Rikkai girls team." Kirihara had tried that, but given it up after a week. It just wasn't as exciting; and the girls worried too much about their appearance to give in to sweat-soaked skin and growling cries.

The gum is losing its flavour but Kirihara keeps chewing anyway. It keeps him occupied and the snapping sound reminds him of Marui, who is more accommodating of him than all the others put together. When Akaya first joined the team, Yukimura recruited Marui to help him find his way and it has lasted; a secure partnership based on mutual appreciation of Pocky sticks and white rabbit candy. Whilst most treat Kirihara as a talented but threatening prodigy, Marui talks to him about second year and about the Yukimura that Kirihara lost before ever really getting to know him. Sometimes they go out for lunch together on Saturdays and Marui reminisces whilst Kirihara tries to understand what his team might be like, were it not for all the rubble and the desperate worry. "I was there," he says once or twice. "When they played. When everyone realised how good it was going to be." Marui studies him with the look that he often uses on Jackal; sussing him out, trying to get to the bottom of him. "I was!" Kirihara protests, just as Marui says, "Yes, you were."

---

The air smells like burnt caramel, Kirihara thinks, making his way through the crowds that have gathered by the courts in the aftermath of school. Rikkai supports everything Rikkai, after all. Kirihara half-listens to the idle chatter around him; Yukimura is well-known outside the tennis squad and his charisma brings with it the incessant chitchat of silly girls. Sanada makes his presence far less obvious but it doesn't save him from the squeaks of those who prefer his upright nobility; his dark eyes and his sharp-featured respect for all around him. When he serves; high and long and wet, Kirihara thinks there isn't a human being in five miles who isn't holding their breath, amazed at the transformation of a man into a beast. Yukimura paints the court red and Sanada too; coaxing him into calls and howls and cries, the jungle wrapped in split-stepping feet. The lack of oxygen makes Kirihara stagger and he moves forward, wringing his fingers between the criss-cross fence and blinking out the setting sun, whose heat has been to the match's benefit.

Kirihara doesn't know yet that Yukimura prefers to play with the midday sun blazing down onto him. He doesn't yet understand that Yukimura doesn't feel entirely fulfilled unless his whole body is aching and soaking with fluid fire. It's not something he's been told yet. Looking at the man dripping onto the court, hair dyed black with sweat; he feels only the delaying of inevitability. Those gorgeous bites of pleasure before the final gratification of pain that's proud and victorious. Adrenaline chasing away agony. That, he knows. At night time, teasing, hands tickling and knees bucking and his teeth hard in his lip. It isn't so very different, he supposes. It's all just fighting a reluctance to fall, isn't it? Yukimura knows he's going to win – but he wants it to last forever, the build-up, the rush of muscle in his stomach, the buzzing in his ears. Sanada knows he's going to lose – but he wants to put it off forever, the descent, the rush of ache in his kneecaps and the red on his face. They exchange rough serves, an hour and a half in, that many of the sub-regulars would kill to be able to do just the once and Kirihara wipes the back of his hand across his forehead.

"You're leaving yourself open," Yukimura gasps across the court and Kirihara thinks that this is a bit unfair, as Seiichi clearly has the edge on him by now. "Come now, Genichirou. You want this to be all over already?"

"Look to yourself," Sanada retorts, throwing in an impressive backhand with a snap of his racket that makes Kirihara jump. "You're losing power in your serves."

Yukimura exhales a half-laugh. "Yes," he breathes, one ankle paused in a tremble as his other foot lifts, returning the ball with vengeful velocity. "But I don't need speed when you're leaving such gaps in your game. Challenge me. You're better than this."

Sanada regards him, hard, and Kirihara's fingers tighten. Everyone knows that these two walk a fine line between getting along and hating one another. His racket swings and the ball volleys back; clean and fast, and Yukimura chases it with glee. Kirihara knows, then, that they're competing for the captaincy. There is time to go until the clinical final decision but these two are wolves and lack patience – this is a bestial standoff. The loser will stand aside and allow the victor to prepare himself for leadership. It is selfish, it is independent and it is very, very Rikkaidai. Kirihara smirks. It is what he intends to do, in his second year. He wants to _be _these two. He wants to be Sanada's impenetrable gameplay; to be the dam against watery opponents. He wants Yukimura's finesse; his shrieking serves and his panting victory smiles. He wants to be the pair of them in this match; soaked in themselves and bleeding tennis within their aching legs. He wants to be every glance, every shot, every breath and every wild scream. He's going to be better than either of them. Both of them. He's going to _be _Rikkaidai after they've gone.

When Yukimura falls to his knees and Sanada throws his head back with an exhausted and cathartic groan, Kirihara finally lets his breath out and presses himself into the fence. Across the court, Marui notices him; this curly-headed prodigy-wannabe, but he thinks little more of him until ranking matches a month or two later.

---

His chin on his palm, Kirihara fights sleep's urging as the train rolls dozily on through the city. When he gets home he'll call Marui, to let him know that Yukimura was having a 'code blue' day. It's what they call it, when he starts having hopeless ambitions and plans that he'll never see unfold – plans that Sanada can't bring himself to think about, on his own. Kirihara doesn't understand why ambition is blue but he gets that everything is blue now, where once it might have been red. Blue is Sanada's voice; toneless and coldly determined. Blue is the way his footsteps sound when they approach Yukimura's room and Sanada makes an effort to shut away his emotions and his desire – blue is false smiles and invented news. If nothing has happened during the week, Sanada makes it up, and Kirihara thinks Yukimura's too aware of his friend's pride to tell him that he knows. Blue is the room, as Sanada's breath runs out and Yukimura looks at him, and when he says, "Tell them I'm thinking of them," he really means, _Tell me you're thinking of me_, and when Sanada says, "Save your energy for getting well. They're in good hands," it makes Yukimura's eyes somehow run out of colour.

For Kirihara, ambition isn't blue. Yukimura isn't blue. He's not red anymore – not on the surface, but sometimes he's something close to orange. When he speaks of his team, his captaincy, it's putting his hands on something that he knows was once warm. It's the clasp of a desperate man onto the one hope he has left, and this is never blue, or cold. Kirihara thinks he will call Marui, but he won't tell him exactly what was said. Sanada probably doesn't need to know that Yukimura wants Kirihara as next year's Captain, whether they're thinking alike or otherwise. But then, there are a lot of things Sanada doesn't like. Yukimura being agitated. Having to handle Rikkai alone. The occasional visits of Hyotei's Captain. Sanada tells Yukimura not to think about things like next year. Sanada tells Kirihara not to think about things like that, too, and so Kirihara sympathises a bit. He tells Yukimura that he'd like to be Captain; that he'd like to have Yukimura around to see him do it. He's something of his hero, after all.

As the train rocks into the station, Kirihara gets up and grabs his bag, pulling his gum out of his mouth and throwing it into the first bin he comes across. He stares down at his undone laces as he walks, pondering what it means to be Captain. What, beyond bloody battles at dawn and repressive conversations that don't happen aloud but instead frustrate the hell out of everyone else in the room. He doesn't want a Fukubuchou, he thinks. He wants to be the one everyone looks to. He wants to be the only one in control; like Hyotei. Kirihara doesn't like Hyotei much (Rikkai supports everything Rikkai, after all), but he grudgingly admits that Atobe has it right. When Kirihara is Captain, everyone will know his name. When Kirihara is Captain, Rikkai will be the best team in the Junior Tennis circuit and nobody will ever talk about Tachibana again, or how sad it is that so little came of that Yukimura Seiichi and Sanada Genichirou. Everything will change. Kirihara will call the shots. Not a vice-captain, not a Captain from a rival team; nobody. Kids always learn to leave their heroes behind, don't they?

Yet he tells his Captain that he wants to play him and to beat him the way he beat Sanada. Rough and blissful; ambition and thorns dressed up in blistered feet, aching elbows, triumphant smiles. And when he looks into his Yukimura face, there's blue after all; blue in his eyes – dark and hot and spirited.


End file.
